Mary, Interrupted
by ALetteredWoman
Summary: One minute, she was dying. The next, she was in a park in her nightgown, facing a strange man who claimed to be her son. Mary's POV of S12.
1. Chapter 1

_Just moments ago, I was pinned to the ceiling in Sammy's room, burning to a crisp. Damn, that hurt. And now...where the hell am I?_

Mary struggled to calm down, to realize that she wasn't dead, after all. She stared at the dimly familiar man in front of her, half-listening to his rough voice detailing bits and pieces of her life, her heritage, while she tried to keep from shivering from the chill breeze filtering through her nightgown. Her shivering also came from the abrupt change in her life, and what this stranger was telling her. She began to focus more, really listening.

 _I...died?_

 _John raised the boys to be Hunters?! Oh, God,_ _ **no**_ _! Please,_ _ **no**_ _!...John?!_ _ **My**_ _John?!_

She gasped at the thought, crushed it down, and focused harder, searching this tall, muscular man's face as he kept speaking, strangely gentle. He called her "Mom". How could any of this be _possible_? She moved closer, trying to see any resemblance. Oh, yes, there were hints. The voice - it was like listening to her Uncle Harry, before he died. The way he stood, moved his hands, talked - flashes of her father, of John peeked through. She shivered again, tallying up the resemblances, the story, her knowledge of the supernatural from when she was hunting.

She stepped forward, putting a tentative hand on this stranger's shoulder, peering deep into his face, and said softly, wonder in her voice, "Dean?"

 _How can this be my little boy? My brave tow-headed Dean? The one who wanted the crusts cut off his sandwiches? Who told me everything was going to be okay, that he loved me, when John and I had that fight? How can this be?!_

A small flame of anger at the universe sprouted in her, for taking his childhood, his youth, all those years, away from her. She had to accept it: yes, this was Dean. Yes, some thirty years had passed while she was...God knew where.

She just had to make the best of it.

* * *

Her head spun as she followed...Dean...down the concrete steps and through the door. Demons. Angels. Sammy - _Sammy?! My sweet little baby boy?!_ \- with psychic powers. Lucifer rising. God. _God_?! And he had a _sister_?!

Then she stopped and peered out over the railing into the huge Art Deco style room beneath her. Dean waved his hand at it and said something about the "Men Of Letters". What?!

"Men of Letters? But that's just a myth!" she protested, following him down the stairs.

Apparently not.

All this incredible heap of information was becoming too much for her to take.

Then an incredibly handsome man just...appeared...shouted, "Dean!", threw his arms around...Dean's...shoulders and hugged him as if his life depended on it. Dean gave her a slightly embarrassed shrug, hugged him back, and nonchalantly told her he was an angel.

No harp, no wings, no glow. Angel. Right. She filed it away. Her head was getting stuffed.

Then: blood on the floor. A...phone call? From that little flat box? Sam gone. Dean using a tiny computer to "hack into the webcams", whatever that meant. And then they were trooping off through this luxurious bunker-like structure to an...indoor garage?!

At which point, thank god, there was _something_ she recognized, though it was a shock: John's car, in sparkling condition, obviously well taken care of. With a sigh of relief at seeing it, recognizing it, she moved forward, trailing a hand along the hood, peering into the driver's window, then into the back seat. The corners of her mouth twitched up in a secret smile as she leaned forward, remembering all those times with John...

Dean peered in from the opposite side, still talking about "Baby". He glanced across the backseat of the car at her, and she suddenly grinned as a look of shock and horror spread across it.

 _Hah! Oh, yes, maybe he really_ _ **is**_ _my son, after all! No stranger would look that horrified at realizing John and I spent many happy hours making out in that backseat!_

She stifled a giggle and stood back up.

* * *

They had tracked down the veterinarian who removed the bullet from Sam's leg. She had to think of it as if this were a strange adult they were talking about, or else she'd have the screaming heebie-jeebies: this was her _baby boy_ they were talking about! They were getting closer. She and the angel followed Dean as he drew his gun, knocked on the door, pushed the vet back into his office and started questioning him.

She watched. Old reflexes were surging back up, old habits, her ability to see telltale hesitations, attempts by a person to throw a Hunter off the trail. Dean was about to tie things up, frustrated at the lack of information, and something about the way the muscles around the vet's eyes relaxed as Dean stood down pinged at her.

She and the angel spoke at the same time. "Hurt him."

* * *

Mary sat in the backseat of the Impala, legs out, staring down at her hands as if she didn't recognize them.

 _A human. I killed a_ _ **human**_ _._

She turned the hands over, noting dully that there was no blood.

She had killed monsters before, years ago, when she was a teen, before she met John and realized that, yes, there might be a way out of the world of hunting.

But she had never killed a human.

It didn't feel any different, physically.

But, there it was: instinctively, without hesitating, when the stocky Englishwoman with the scarred face had been about to shoot Dean... _my son_ , the thought flitted through her brain...she had slid up behind her, moving on tiptoes, bracing herself, and jammed the strange blade between the woman's shoulders.

She flipped her hands over again. They didn't look any different. Just hands. Hands that had held John, had wiped jelly off her toddler's face, had swaddled baby Sam's body in warm blankets.

 _My hands._

So many years of peaceful living. A home, a family, a normal life. No violence. No creepy things in the night. No overarching need to "protect humanity". No fear. No disguises. Just a life. Then she had walked past her baby boy's room into a nightmare. John was downstairs, not in Sammy's room. Then the screaming fear had come crashing over her like a wave, the realization that there was a stranger hovering over her baby, and she was running, running, running...

And now, hours later, here she was.

A shadow fell across her, and Dean's voice came as if from a distance: "Are you okay?"

She glanced up at him, looked back down at her hands. A stranger's hands.

"No," she answered in a small voice.


	2. Chapter 2

When she woke up, she knew something was wrong. As always, her first movement was to wrap sleepy arms around John, but he wasn't there. She poked blindly at the bed, but where he should be there were no rumpled bedclothes, nothing indicating he had just gotten up to go to the bathroom, or, as he sometimes did when insomnia hit, gone downstairs to watch TV.

"John?" she mumbled. " _John_?!" A feeling of wrongness crept down her spine.

She yawned, stretched, opened her eyes.

Not her bedroom.

It came crashing back on her: wandering through the house, thinking John was in with Sammy, hearing him downstairs, running back to Sammy's room. The demon with the yellow eyes. Being flung to the ceiling, screaming at the flames, the pain. Then...suddenly in a park, in her nightgown. Dean. All grown up.

 _John is dead._

She gasped as if she had been punched, and curled into a ball, heart aching, tears leaking from her eyes.

 _He's not just dead, he's been dead for ten years. And before that...he turned into someone you don't know, a hard man, a_ _Hunter._

She keened, clutched herself tighter, shook her head. _No no no no...!_

She let herself sob until there were no more tears. Then she clenched her teeth and slowly pulled herself out of her protective ball. She dragged a hand across her wet face, sniffed loudly to clear her nose, and looked around the dim room.

The bunker. Men of Letters - not a myth, but real, and not just in the U.S., but world-wide. Wild stories from Dean. Dean and Sammy, all grown up, as old as John was - had been - just a day ago.

The tears threatened to start again, and she clamped down on them fiercely.

 _No time, no time for that. Some Englishwoman has Sammy. We have to find him. No time to think about John...Time to put your big girl face on._

She gasped again as the pain stabbed into her. She bit her lip, stood up, and doggedly changed into her clothes, trying to forget.

* * *

She heard Dean talking as she got closer to the main room. He must be on the phone with someone. Ah! Cas. The angel. She still didn't know whether to believe that particular bit or not.

"I don't know what to say to her, you know? It - it's - it's like it's all just too much, and...I don't want to overwhelm her."

She stopped and listened while he finished the conversation.

 _'Overwhelm' me?! What, do I seem so delicate to him?!_

She rolled it over in her thoughts. Well, yeah, she could see it. There were a lot of things that were incredibly different. _So_ different. But she suspected that the things that were overwhelming her weren't the things he _thought_ were overwhelming her. Her thoughts went fleetingly to John again, and she pushed the realization of his death away one more time, like she had been doing over and over since she first woke. Then she drew in a steadying breath and walked into the room.

* * *

A day with no news. Another night, filled with dreams of John. Another jolting lurch into wakefulness in an empty bed, without John. Another bout of tears. Another day to face in this strange new world.

 _I killed a human. Not a monster._

She had - amazingly - forgotten, and it was yet another jarring signpost of how life had changed. Dragging a brush through her hair, she thrust away the memory of the feel of the knife sinking into the woman's body.

 _What's important is Sammy. Where is he? Is he okay? What are they - those Men of Letters from England - doing to him?_

The haze of questions surrounded her as she made her way, again, to the kitchen. Dean was sitting at the table, poking at his..."laptop". She would be impressed, except she had also seen what they called "phones". He looked up as she walked in.

"Hey! How'd you sleep?"

"I had dreams all night."

"Good dreams?" he asked.

 _Yes. No. Yes, I guess, good. Dreaming of an evening last week, when we were in the living room and baby Sammy was scooting across the floor in his onesie, crowing, trying to get away from Dean, who was pretending to be a dinosaur and roaring as he chased after his baby brother. John and I were cuddled on the sofa, arms around each other, laughing at the two of them..._

"Stuff I'd forgotten about. Funny stuff your dad did." _John getting up, swooping down on Dean, and swinging him up in his arms upside down, roaring, "I'm gonna EAT you, ROWR!_ " She smiled into the distance at the memory. "He was a great father."

Dean nodded and said nothing, just looked down, quickly. It was an interesting reaction. Not enthusiastic. She suddenly thought of two young boys with no mother, being parented by that revenge-seeking father. A man chasing monsters, looking for the biggest of them all to kill it. A man who had to make his sons tough to keep them alive.

She shivered, wrapped her arms about herself.

Dean's phone twittered at him, and he seized it as if glad to have an excuse not to talk about his father.

 _Oh, John! I'm so sorry my mistakes made you change like that!_

* * *

It was the angel, Castiel, again. Dean's voice and demeanor changed subtly. She watched her son's face as he talked, not really listening. Trying, as always, to match bits and pieces of him, his voice, his mannerisms, to John, herself, family. It made it easier to think of him as "son", grown up, that way.

She came to full awareness when Dean said, loudly, "Powerfully warded? Okay, see, buddy, that – that was your headline right there! Where are you?" A beat, then, "Okay, got it. I'm on my way."

A lead. Surely? That immediate alertness, the decisive way he thumbed off the phone and jammed it in his pocket, that's what it meant. She stood up. "I'll get my coat."

Once more, she hit the roadblock of "protective Dean" and had to push past it to be allowed to join him in rescuing Sammy. In the car and on their way, she mulled it over. It was interesting. She was beginning to realize that he thought of her as some imaginary Mother Figure, not a person. Like a unicorn. She snorted to herself.

"What's funny?" he asked.

"Oh, nothing," she said, looking out the window, trying to keep from giggling.

* * *

Outside the mysterious rented farmhouse, protective Dean reared up again, and she was left behind to "keep Castiel company". Castiel, blocked by wardings. An angel that wasn't much use, then, in getting at Sammy. She fumed at the silliness of being Mother Figure. It wasn't all that amusing, after all; she itched for a chance to get at these Men of Letters who were holding her precious baby. But because she was "Mom" - maybe because she was a woman? - Dean put her on the sidelines, kept her safe, discounted her.

 _Of course, Sammy's not my baby anymore. He's a man. Someone I don't know at all. And, oh, Sammy, why give up a scholarship to Stanford Law?! Why?!_

She paced back and forth beside Castiel, getting more and more anxious as minutes ticked past.

"Should it be taking this long?" she asked, stopping dead still and glaring at the house.

Castiel, eyes hooded and brooding, said nothing for a few moments. Then, sighing, he looked at her. "No. I think something has happened -"

It was all she needed; she was off and running towards the house before he finished.

* * *

 _Why the cellar? Why not somewhere bright and comfortable? Is it easier to clean the blood away?_ Mary wondered as she ghosted after the Englishwoman down the stairs. She could hear her talking about pain and eyelids, which was enough for her; she pulled the gun from her waistband as she reached the bottom of the stairs, aimed, and cocked.

The sound was shockingly loud.

"Get away from my boys."

 _"Boys". Oh my god. Not "boys" - just look at that giant with the long hair, is **that** my baby Sammy?!_

The Englishwoman whirled around. Dean grinned at her. Sammy - well, Sammy looked like he had just been hit with a two-by-four, gaping at her.

 _Oh my god._ _ **Look**_ _at that hair. John would howl with laughter at the "hippie". But he looks like he could be good in a fight. And it_ _ **is**_ _pretty hair..._

"Mom?" His voice was shaky. Dean grinned at him, instead.

"Yeah!"

She kept the gun aimed at the woman as she moved toward the table. Glancing down, she saw keys; hoping they were for the chains around her boys, she grabbed them with her other hand. She moved toward the woman. "On the ground. Now." The woman just stood there, sneering slightly, and suddenly it was too much: filled with rage at the woman, at the world, at a dead John and grown children, Mary slammed the hand with the gun into the woman's face, tossed the keys to Dean.

It wasn't as simple as all that, though. There was a fight. The dainty Englishwoman turned out to know a variety of fighting moves and was stronger than she looked, and Mary, having just been yanked away from a life as a mother and homemaker, was far from in good fighting shape.

The short, vicious melee ended when Dean popped the woman a good one in the face, knocking her out.

* * *

Back in the Bunker. Back in her temporary room. They had had dinner, take-out from a chicken place, plus pie. She smiled into the mirror above the desk, amused that Dean, a grown man, was just as enthusiastic about pie as he had been as a toddler. The smile faded as her eyes focused on her reflection.

Toddler? Man. Sammy, her sweet drooling, kicking, crawling baby? Man. John? Gone.

 _But me - I haven't changed. What do I do? Who am I now? Do I have a place in this world?_

There was a knock at the door, and Sammy - giant, grown, adult Sammy - poked his head in, holding a steaming cup in one hand, a worn brown leather journal in the other.

* * *

Sammy had left, and she was left alone with the journal, the mirror, her thoughts. Her hand absently stroked the aging leather of the journal, then she slowly opened it, looked down at the pages, began reading.

 _Let's learn about the man John became after my death..._


	3. Chapter 3

_"Mama! Come push me!" It was Dean, dangling on the swing, looking grumpy at not being able to pump himself into motion, like the boys just a bit older than him could. She glanced down at baby Sammy, lying on his back on the picnic blanket. Gurgling with delight, he was grabbing at the feet at the end of his pinwheeling legs. He had just discovered the ability a few days ago, and could play this way for hours. Smiling, she bent down over him, wiped the drool from his chin, kissed him, and then stood up._

 _"I'll just be a moment, Sammy!" she reassured him, then walked over to the swing set to pull Dean's swing back, get him started. The May sunshine felt warm and caressing on her head and back, and a gentle breeze blew her hair into her eyes._

 _A hand fell on her shoulder, a head leaned in to kiss her neck. John. Back from work. His arm stole around her waist, pulled her close._

 _"Daddy! Daddy! Come push me! Swing me high!" With a laugh and a blush and an exchange of looks that still made her tingle after all their years together, she stepped back, let John take her place._

 _"Hey, there, buddy, lemme do that for ya!" The sun glinted off his raven black hair, his flashing smile._

 _Then, as she watched, she heard a rumble. The ground started shaking, harder and harder. A gout of black smoke erupted from the ground beneath the swing set, engulfing her husband and child, obscuring them from her sight. All was silent. As she ran frantically forward, reaching for them, she realized she didn't hear Sammy, either. She whirled around to see the black smoke swoop down on him, swallow him - my baby! The world vanished and she was all that was left, swept up in the black cloud, tumbling, whirling, unable to find solid ground, screaming -_

Mary sat upright in the bed with a gasp, shaking, peering into the darkness with staring eyes.

 _No John._

It was always her first thought now when she woke from the dreams, both the good and - like tonight - the bad. She reached out, switched on the bedside light, and leaned her forehead on her knees, wrapped her arms around her shins, and huddled there, weeping.

* * *

Her friend Jenny had lost her husband a few years ago. Whenever she'd visit her house, she would gently scold Jenny to finally clean out his clothes from the closet. Jenny would just look at her, shake her head. Once, she said quietly, "It's all I have left, Mare. Sometimes I - I just stick my head into the clothes on his side of the closet and...and draw in a deep breath, smell his scent. I can't get rid of them. I just...can't. Not yet."

At the time, she had murmured sympathetic words, not really understanding. Now she understood, bone deep. Because she _didn't_ have that - she had nothing left of John, except for his journal. Her hand clutched it tighter to her as she wandered the quiet, dark hallway, towards the common room of the bunker.

A while later, as she was re-reading the entries yet again, she looked up to see Castiel watching her. She smiled at him, glad to take a break from the reading. He was odd, but always, always gentle, and comforting to talk with. (She was still dubious about the angel thing, though.)

A quick, quiet exchange, and she got up to head back to her bedroom. She was walking out when she found herself stopping, turning, asking as if it was forced out of her, "After you left heaven, when did it start to feel like...like you fit, like you...belonged here?"

His answer didn't reassure her, and his earnest rejoinder that she _did_ belong here didn't convince.

When she got to her bedroom, she shut the door and leaned against it with a sigh.

 _Maybe it'll be a good dream, this time._

 _I need something to do. All this yearning after John, staying in the bunker - it's not good for me._

She moved to the mirror and twirled a lock of her long hair around a finger, musing. John had always loved to bury his head in her long hair after making love. But she needed to move on.

She reached into a drawer, pulled out some scissors.

 _Oh, lordy. I'm gonna regret this! I'll probably have to go to a salon to get it fixed!_

Lifting the scissors, she pulled the lock of hair she had been twirling out, away from her head, and began cutting.

* * *

She grabbed Dean as he was on his way out to get breakfast makings, asked him to buy her some newspapers. He gave her a quizzical look, but agreed. When he returned, he handed her a treasure trove of three newspapers. She seized them with joy and retreated to her bedroom again. Settling on the bed, she strewed the papers around her and dove in.

The news fascinated her, as always. It was an election year, and the choice seemed to be between a boorish buffoon and a competent, grandmotherly looking woman. She read the stories, tried (again) to grasp the urgency of this "email" issue and why it was important, then gave up, turning to other stories.

One from the more local paper caught her attention, a story about two dead bodies found in a locked room in a house in Minnesota. There was no cause of death, even though they had called the police before their bodies were discovered. She read the article, moved on, then flipped back to it, re-reading it. It wasn't much, but something...something in the story "pinged" on her dormant Hunter's instincts. She sat back, rolling it around in her head.

 _Locked room death. Hah! Such a classic mystery cliche! But...no cause of death? Hmm._

She realized that part of her was eager, interested, alert.

It made a nice change.

* * *

When she announced her plan to go to Minnesota to check out the possible case, Protective Sam appeared, and Protective Dean joined in. It was getting irritating. It was...stifling...to have them always being so cautious about her. She understood, intellectually, that she was their long-lost mother, and they didn't want to risk losing her. Still. Mentally gritting her teeth, she gave in to the idea of a "family hunt".

It was, after all, good to have more than one person on a case.

* * *

The road trip wasn't too bad: she and Dean bonded over bad car food and loud rock music. Dean calling it "classic" rock took her aback; to her, "classic" meant Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby. A lot of the stuff he played was music that was still pretty fresh to her.

 _Just another of those things I have to adjust to._

Their visit with the coroner was intriguing. Though it hadn't been released, he _did_ have a cause of death, acute hypothermia.

As they walked back to the car, Sam was thinking aloud. "Heart frozen solid. We've never had that one before. Maybe some type of Arctic monster? I'll dig into some Norwegian lore..." Mary rolled her eyes.

"Yeah, you do that, Sammy." Dean glanced at her. "Guess you were right about it being a case, Mom."

"Right." She did her best to keep her voice light. Of _course_ she had been right! "But...look, guys, hypothermia? Ghosts always make the temperature drop like crazy. Couldn't it just be a ghost?"

Sam frowned over at her. "Don't ghost victims always die of - well, essentially, fear?"

Dean pulled open the door to the Impala, leaned his forearm on the car's frame. "Yeah, look, Mom, heart frozen, frostbite hand marks on the body? Sounds like a monster to me."

* * *

When they investigated the house where the bodies had been found, of _course_ it turned out to be a ghost. Right now, as she pounded on the door that had slammed shut on her, calling out to Sam and Dean, hearing them call out to her, that ghost was standing right next to her.

It wasn't a scary ghost, though, which bothered her. It was a little blond boy, just a few years older than _her_ Dean, the one she missed so much. And the expression on his face - scared but determined not to show it, lip trembling with unshed tears - oh, she had seen that expression on Dean's face before. Trying so hard to be brave, be a big boy.

"Mom! Get away from the door!" Dean, sounding frantic. She stepped back. The ghost-boy put a hand on her arm. The door broke down, Sam grabbed her and spun her away, and Dean was slashing at the ghost-boy with an iron poker. The ghost exploded into a shower of sparkles and disappeared.

"Mom! Are you all right?!"

"You're hurt!"

Hurt? She didn't feel hurt. Where was she hurt?

"Come on, come on!" And the boys were pulling her out of the room, towards the front door. She turned her head to look back, and thought she saw the ghost-boy, a frantic fist to his mouth, looking after them with dismay.

But it could have been her imagination.

* * *

Back at the hotel room. Research from the "internet". A litany of children, all mysteriously dead, dying in that house. Sam and Dean were fixated on monsters, vengeful children's spirits from Scandinavian lore. She told them the boy had been scared, but they scoffed, said it was to lure her. All she could hear, at one point, was a scared little boy's voice saying, "Help me!"

And then they marched out to salt and burn all the babies' bones, leaving her behind.

Babies' bones. Babies. Well, not really, young children. But still: just babies. Like _her_ Dean and Sammy, the ones she had left behind just weeks ago.

She glared at the hotel room door after them. She wasn't a fool. She'd been hunting all her life, with just a few years' break. She had the gut-level knowledge of a Hunter born and raised. Something wasn't right here.

She picked up the hotel room phone, made a few calls.

Then she started back to the house.

* * *

As she walked in, the ghost-boy reappeared in front of her. She knew his name now, had talked with his mother.

"Lucas. That's your name, right? I talked to your mommy. She misses you so much..."

The boy pointed to the door to the basement. She moved to it, pried it open, started down the stairs with her flashlight on. The boy was beside her again.

"Lucas? Why did you bring me here?"

His face twisted with fear. "Help...us..."

A quick call from Dean and Sam, concerned - as always! - then the connection died. Between one step and the next, the air froze around her, sending her breath steaming. She knew the signs.

"What's keeping you here?" she asked the boy.

He pointed behind her. "Him."

The house started shaking, and the twisted apparition of a man appeared before her. She looked into his eyes, eyes filled with grief and rage and anger, and knew.

"You're the one. Your little girl died, and you've been killing all these children - "

Instead of sending her flying, he pulled her close, then placed a hand over her heart. The frigid air around her seemed to pour into her body from that spot, sending icy tendrils down her arteries, replacing blood with ice...

* * *

It was strange. It was like looking at the world from behind a block of ice. She knew, in a very remote kind of way, that the ghost had possessed her, that she was locked out. But she didn't really care. She watched her body fighting her sons as if it were a scene from a movie, something that didn't really concern her.

For one moment, when Dean and Sam called her name, it cut through to her. She clawed, fought, scrambled through the wall of ice, forced the ghost away.

She had enough time and strength to choke out, "The basement! Go!", and then the ice refroze around her, encased her once more. She caught a dim, fleeting glimpse of Sam running down the basement stairs. Then: ghost and Dean battling, Mary frozen in time and space, watching the movie again from the ghost's point of view.

Time unfroze. Dean's arms were wrapped around her, holding an iron chain to confine, constrain the ghost. The ghost which was now separating from her, retreating, flaring up in flames, screaming, surrounded by a bunch of child ghosts. When he finally disappeared, the ghosts of the children, one after another, flared into blue white light, drifted upward. The ghost of Lucas took one second to look at her, smile with overwhelming relief and thanks, before he, too, transformed and vanished.

* * *

The long ride back to the bunker was silent. She could tell the boys were worried, upset, thinking.

She was thinking, too.

It had helped. The hunt. It had taken her out of that wasteland of grief. But Lucas...he had brought back to her just how much she missed little-boy Dean, baby Sammy. The two were grown men now - _good_ men. Intellectually, they were her sons. But in her heart of hearts? Strangers.

And they saw her as Mom. Someone to be cherished, protected. A cardboard cut-out made of sentiment and stereotype. Yes, having them there had helped; she had been _so_ stupid to go back to the house without one or the other of them. Her dad's voice ran through her head: "Always have a partner, someone ready to back you up if the Hunt goes south."

She looked out the window at the passing wheat fields and a tear slid down her cheek.

* * *

Black at the bunker, when she told them she was leaving, that she missed her boys...her heart broke at the stunned expression on Dean's face. But she needed _time_. Time to be alone. To stop missing John and the boys so very much.

Her attempt to explain seemed to shatter Dean even more. Sam said, face earnest, "We're _here_ , Mom. _We're_ your boys." So sweet. So empathetic. So missing the point.

She hugged him tight, told him she loved him. When she tried to hug Dean, he stepped back, not looking at her, still shattered.

"I love you both," she said, trying to reach him. It didn't work. Pain, a pain of a different sort than she had been lugging around these weeks, seeped into her. She held back more tears, nodded at Sam, turned away, walked up the stairs.

 _Now what?_

Outside the bunker, she hitched her small backpack up, looked around, started walking the road back into town. The wind tousled her hair, tickled the back of her newly bare neck, rustled through dead leaves and grasses. She drew in a deep, determined breath.

 _I'll figure it out._


	4. Chapter 4

Mary sat at the bar, rolling a glass of beer between her two hands. It was a humid night, and even though the bar was air conditioned, it was still humid enough that the glass was covered with a thin film of condensation, lowering the friction. She had to concentrate to make sure it didn't squirt out from between her fingers, strewing beer across the bar.

Rickie, her current Hunting partner, was late.

 _Of course. He's always late. God, the man is so...so..._

She sighed, positioned the beer glass carefully before her, and wiped her wet hands on her thighs.

 _Sloppy. He's a sloppy dresser, has sloppy hair, eats sloppily, and is a fucking sloppy Hunter._

When she left the bunker, and her boys, she had taken one of the sets of fake IDs, complete with credit cards. She had spent a week or two marking time, working as a waitress at one of the diners in Lebanon, sleeping in a dismal cheap rented room, while she thought. While she struggled to learn more about this brave new world she was stuck in. While she schooled herself not to dissolve into tears at the thought of John, or her babies, long gone and lost to her.

Whenever she caught sight of Sam or Dean in town, she had ducked away, hidden from them. Then, her impatience with herself growing, she had dug out the list of Hunters' names she had copied out of John's journal and begun calling.

It had been almost comical.

Almost.

"Hi, there, Rex. My name is Mary Winchester; I'm a relative of Dean and Sam Winchester - "

Click.

Or, "Yes, Dave, they're still alive, living in Kansas, still Hunting - "

Click.

Or, "Well, I don't know anything about that. The Apocalypse? What?! Sam released Lucifer to walk the world?!"

That one had been fun. Funny how Sam and Dean had sort of glided over that. Though it did explain how they had gotten in cahoots with the angel, Castiel.

Ricky had talked to her, though. Had agreed to meet up with her. Needed a Hunting partner. Wanted her expertise. So she had driven to Valdosta, Georgia, to partner up with him. So far, it hadn't been very satisfying. Oh, they had salted and burned a few ghosts (though the one in Tallahassee had almost gotten her because he was slow digging up the bones), killed a lone, mangy werewolf who looked almost happy to die, and flushed a nest of vampires. But she was used to her father's almost military precision and discipline, and Ricky's half-assed approach to research and dispatching monsters didn't live up to her memories.

If she was going to hunt, dammit, she wanted to make a difference in the world. Keep other children from the horrors that her boys had had to deal with growing up. Horrors that included, apparently, a father who was a drunk, fell into unpredictable rages, and abandoned the boys for days, weeks at a time. Oh, yeah, Ricky had shared that; apparently it had been well known among the Hunting community. It was yet another disconnect between Life Before and Life Now: her gentle, loving John would never have done things like that.

Would he?

She sighed again, glanced at the clock over the bar.

 _Looks like he's going to stand me up. Again. Oh, well. Time to go back to my place. And...maybe...time to start calling Hunters again?_

She picked up the glass to slug back what beer was left, and started to stand up when a hand fell on her shoulder.

"Hello, Mary." A pleasant, light tenor voice, with a distinct British accent. She stiffened, turned, glared.

"You!"

He was slender, good-looking, a smile on his face, but, oh, she knew him. That bastard Mick Davies from the British Men of Letters, the one who had come in after that British Lady Bitch went fucking _torturing_ her baby Sam - ! She shrugged off the hand, stood up.

"Get away from me." Her voice was hard, filled with rage.

"Now, now, Mary. We just want to talk. A chat."

"'We'?" She suddenly realized that there was another man on her other side, taller, bulkier, dressed immaculately, a tiny smirk on his lips.

"This is Mr. Ketch, an...associate."

She divided her glare between them. "I don't give a damn what his name is. I don't want to talk to him, or to you - "

Davies slid onto the barstool to her right, taking her hand and pulling her gently back down onto her stool. Ketch leaned gracefully against the bar on her left close at hand. They had effectively boxed her in. The bartender, watching the scene with suspicion, wandered over, polishing the bar top with a rag, and gave her a cautious look.

"Everything okay here, folks?" It was a general question, but she knew it was aimed at her.

Ketch reached into his suit jacket, pulled out a few bills, and held them out to the bartender in a light, two-fingered grip. "Three of your best scotches, if you please," he said. The suave tone of the request, the expensive suit, the English accent, the large amount of money - Mary could see the "100" peeping from the corner of the outer bill - sealed the deal. The bartender nodded, took the bills, and walked off. Mary fumed.

"See? Just talk," Davies said. "And a drink. Maybe a proposition."

She couldn't help the amused quirk to her eyebrow, the small snort that escaped her lips. For some reason, the amusement helped her relax. Davies rolled his eyes. "Not that kind of proposition! We've been watching you, Mary - "

"I'll bet," she muttered.

" - and it's obvious that your...er...partner...Ricky Barnes, right?" Davies peered at her questioningly. At her nod, he continued, "Well. He's not quite...um...well - "

"Capable," Ketch said. His voice was deeper than Davies'. He sneered. "That's the word you're looking for, Mick. The man is a menace, and shouldn't be allowed out of his house, let alone to go Hunting."

Mary found herself regarding this Mr. Ketch with sudden approval.

"Well." Davies sounded apologetic. "It's a bit harsh, don't you think, Mr. Ketch?"

The bartender returned and slid the three scotches across the bar to them. Once again, he shot a questioning look at Mary. This time, she nodded. He nodded back, relieved, and headed away again. Ketch took one of the drinks and nudged another to Mary. He lifted his glass and gave her a tiny toast with it.

"It may be harsh, but it's true, and our Mrs. Winchester here knows it very well. She's quite able to see his deficiencies on her own, and doesn't need us to expose them."

She regarded him silently for a moment, then picked up her own drink, gave it a quick tip toward him, and took a sip. "I was just thinking to myself that he's sloppy," she said. Ketch raised his eyebrows and gave her a quick smile.

"See there, Mick?"

Davies folded his lips, then shook it off. He tapped on the bar in front of Mary. "So. Anyway. Your current partner is not...the best. And given what we know of your history, and your sons...well. You're probably not very satisfied with the Hunting you're getting out of him."

She took another sip of the scotch and eyed him over the glass. "Okay. We've established that Ricky isn't a great Hunter. So. What?"

Davies grinned at her. "Ahah! The crux of the matter! So here's the thing, Mary - " He hunched over his drink on the bar, getting enthusiastic. "We have better methods. We have special weapons against vampires, werewolves, ghosts, demons. We have years of tactics, strategies, alchemy, at our disposal. And you...You want to hunt." He paused and looked at her expectantly.

"Okay...?" She motioned for him to continue. She could see where this was going, and, truth to tell, it was...intriguing.

"So. What say we join forces, eh? The British Men of Letters can scout out information, gather the intelligence, and you and...say, Mr. Ketch here?...go out and act upon that intelligence. I know you want to help the world, Mary. Here's a chance to really make a difference." He was passionate about it. Truthful. It shone in his eyes, and sounded in his voice. He _believed_.

She focused on her glass, spinning it around on the bar. She did want to make a difference. Hadn't she just been thinking about ditching sloppy Ricky, finding a new partner? Didn't these men give off an air of competence, reliability? She bit her lips as she thought, staring sightlessly at the glass. Finally, she turned her eyes back to Davies.

"Tell you what. Give me one case to work. With...I guess, with him." She nodded in Ketch's direction. "Tell me more about how you guys work. What your...philosophy, I guess?...is. I'll give it a chance." She paused, then her voice hardened. "But I can tell you that your Lady Bitch was _not_ a good introduction to your group, and I'm still mad as _hell_ about what she did to my son."

Davies leaned back, holding defensive hands up between them. "Trust me, I was quite angry with her, myself. That was _not_ how she was supposed to approach the Winchesters, at _all_ , and she is being dragged on the carpet about it royally. The higher-ups were furious, as a matter of fact, and she has been demoted as a result."

 _Demoted? What, is it like a corporation? General manager back down to sales associate?_

She nodded at him. "Don't forget it. Because I won't. Trust me." She locked eyes with him and he slowly nodded back.

"So. Shall we leave, then?" Ketch asked in a light voice, gesturing to the entrance to the bar. He smiled at her, a small, controlled smile.

Mary picked up the glass, drank the remaining scotch, settled it back on the bar with a thump, and stood up again.

"Let's."

As they walked out, her mind tickled at her.

 _Maybe it's more like an army?_


End file.
